


Outweigh the Surgeon's Knife

by Dracoduceus



Series: Nothing Gold [9]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Hanahaki AU, Nothing Gold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-21 22:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16585124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracoduceus/pseuds/Dracoduceus
Summary: I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.Angela--Angela the woman, not Dr. Zielger, the prodigy, the surgeon, just Angela--closed the door behind her, engaged the privacy mode, and let herself slide down the wall as she crumpled to the ground.She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.That day she had cut out Hanzo's heart.





	Outweigh the Surgeon's Knife

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the [modern physicians' oath](https://www.hospicepatients.org/modern-physicians-oath-louis-lasagna.html) and discussions of the [Mercy zine](https://letmercysayfuckzine.tumblr.com/post/179881500994/welcome).

Angela--Angela the woman, not Dr. Zielger, the prodigy, the surgeon, just Angela--closed the door behind her, engaged the privacy mode, and let herself slide down the wall as she crumpled to the ground.

She buried her face in her hands and sobbed

* * *

Dr. Angela Ziegler had never much cared for Shimada Hanzo.

Most people seemed to think that it was an old anger from what he had done to Genji. They were wrong but in some ways they were also correct. No, she did  _ not _ like what he had done and did not like the sins of his past.

Nor did he, and she could tell by the look in his eyes when she first met him and in the way that he had deferred to his younger brother at every turn. They were the signs of haunted men and they were sights that she knew all too well.

Shimada Hanzo was polite enough to her. In the field he protected her as well as he was able to and called out assailants that came up in her blind spot, just as he did for everyone else. In the halls he greeted her with a polite nod of the head, a murmured "Dr. Ziegler", before making himself scarce.

He was a broken man, that was plain enough to her, and he was a man that was weighed down with enough regret that she thought it may drown him completely one day. He was understandably wary of her and despite her dislike of him it truly upset her.

"Is there something wrong, Shimada Hanzo?" she asked late one night when she saw him haunting the halls like a ghost. Perhaps her tone was a little rough--she  _ had _ , after all, been awake for over 24 hours--and her words were sharp enough to cut but she had never seen the ex- _ yakuza _ prince be affected by little things like words before.

But now...

Something in her words struck him and she watched him almost crumble around it. "Nothing wrong, Dr. Ziegler," he told her diffidently.

She crossed her arms across her chest. What she really wanted to do was sleep but there was something deep down in her--perhaps a gut feeling, perhaps the whispers of a God she no longer believed in--that told her  _ not _ to leave it.

Perhaps it was the late hour and the fact that in the past week she had perhaps only slept a cumulative six hours, but she could almost hear the voice of an old professor in her ear: " _ I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug _ ".

So for that reason, she hummed and stepped in front of him when he tried to walk past her. "My office," she decided. "Now."

Sleep can wait.

He clearly considered denying her. She was only blocking one way down the hall after all, and she knew that he could scale walls as easily as his damned brother could so the window next to them was also an option.

"It is late, Dr. Ziegler," he said at last with a little bow of his head.

"It is," she replied. "And we both know that you aren't sleeping, probably won't for a while. So: my office. Now."

Shimada Hanzo seemed to roll his next words in his mouth for a moment before speaking them. "It is late, Dr. Ziegler," he repeated slowly. "It would not be appropriate..."

She snorted. "Let them gossip if they are up at three in the morning to see us," she said. "And so long as you and I know that you were  _ in my office _ on official capacity, which we are and will be, then there is nothing to worry about." She gave him a stern look. "That is not why I am calling you into my office."

He seemed to understand exactly what he had implied and his eyes widened as if in horror. "My apologies," he said, his words rushing out of him faster than she had ever heard from him. "Dr. Ziegler, I-"

Angela held up a hand and he stopped. "I know you did not mean it that way," she told him. "You are a very private person and did not want talk to circulate about your abilities in the field. I have other things I wish to speak with you about, so march."

It was something her parents used to say and it caused a pang in her chest to think of them. Perhaps that was the wrong thing to say to the man in front of her, as if she thought herself better than him or showed to him that she thought that she had power over him. It didn't work with Jesse, would only make him angry like a bull at a red flag, but Shimada Hanzo wasn't Jesse and he just bowed his head and obeyed, turning and walking down the appropriate corridor.

For a moment Angela stood there in the hallway, the magnitude of what she was just about to do--what she  _ was doing _ really sinking in. She had ordered an ex- _ yakuza _ mob boss around like a child.

_ And he had gone. _

She pinched the bridge of her nose. What was she in for, now?

Their talk was long and lasted late into the night. When they finally parted ways they had a better understanding of each other and Angela didn’t hate Shimada Hanzo-- _ just Hanzo, please, Dr. Ziegler _ \--quite as much as she had before. 

They reached an understanding and Angela knew that she would never speak of this encounter ever again. 

* * *

Footsteps stopped in front of her. "Ange."

She lifted her head, her makeup smeared and her eyes puffy from crying. The only way she could tell that it was Lúcio standing in front of her was from his silhouette and the soft click of his dreads. Her vision was too blurred to make out more.

"Hey," Lúcio said and grunted as he knelt in front of her. "He's fine. He's still alive."

He tugged her into a hug and she clung to Lúcio tightly, probably pressing bruises into his dark skin.

"I think that was the hardest thing I've ever had to do," Lúcio continued. "But...he's alive. He's still alive. He's still with us."

_ If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. _

But did she?

Angela thought of all the private moments they had. She and Shimada Hanzo had never been  _ friends _ but they had been  _ friendly. _

Now all of that was gone. Now the man she had come to know was gone and had been replaced by an empty shell.

She had watched him on that table, watched him cry to Lúcio, watched him give in to his fear for the last few seconds of his life that he could feel.

"He's still alive," Lúcio repeated. "He'll be okay."

_ And what about Jesse? _ she wanted to demand.  _ What about the two of them, together? What about a future that they will never have? _

She bit her lips until they bled and smothered her sobs into Lúcio's neck.

* * *

Mercy watched in slow-motion as Hanzo fell off the side of a building and as if sensing her distraction, Pharah grunted. "Go," she said over the coms. "I'll be fine for a while."

"Will you?" Mercy teased but was already angling her wings to let her glide toward Hanzo until the protocols in her suit kicked in to zip her to the archer's side.

Hanzo was favoring an arm--no, his shoulder--but it looked like his gear wasn't damaged. As if the idiot had rolled to protect them rather than himself.

"Honestly," she grumbled at him as she switched her healing beam on him.

"It's nothing major, Doctor," Hanzo protested.

Mercy snorted indelicately. "Where did you complete your residency and when?" she asked tartly as she read the information she was receiving from her staff. "I hadn't realized that you were proficient in bodily injury."

"I completed my residency in a back alley in Hanamura," Hanzo shot back, teeth gritted against the pain. Healing, especially on the battlefield, wasn't  _ painless _ after all. And he  _ had _ dislocated his shoulder and cracked a few ribs. "I learned that people have a lot of blood in them. Since liquid is heavy, I relieved them of that weight."

For a long moment Mercy stared at him. "Did...did you just fucking crack a joke?"

Hanzo grimaced. "I do not joke."

"Fucking bullshit," Mercy muttered. "Hold still while I heal you." She flicked on her staff and grunted when she felt the beam snap into place.

It was a visceral feeling, like the rattle of a needle gun in her skull. She wondered if anyone realized just  _ how _ her staff worked in conjunction with the implants in her own spine and skull.

So she knew at the exact same time that Hanzo did when a Talon operative turned the corner. It was second nature, "plugged" into Hanzo's brain as she was--reflex to draw her sidearm and aim.

But it was entirely her own doing that had her aiming for his shoulders, not his trunk or head or knees. After all, a useful operative was still alive and could easily be healed; if she kneecapped him she may as well have sentenced him to death.

When she turned back to Hanzo, she thought she saw respect in his eyes. A moment later he grimaced and her instruments told her he felt pain as the last of his ribs healed and his shoulder popped back into place.

"Thank you, Doctor," he murmured and scaled the nearest wall, lingering at the edge long enough for her to latch on to him to get her in the air. From there she found Pharah as she glided past and latched on, taking her higher above the field.

* * *

In Lúcio's arms she remembered a thousand things.

She remembered a thousand little smiles given when Hanzo thought that no one was looking. Little gestures, little expressions that made an ex- _ yakuza _ seem like a human being and not some kind of terrible killing machine.

She remembered the "feeling" of him as she turned her healing beam on him, the shape of his thoughts and the current of emotions as he processed the world.

Most of all she remembered the little stories that McCree would tell her. Of a man he loved, once.

They met beneath the boughs of willow tree whose leaves had gathered  _ sakura _ petals as they fell. They kissed in secret and loved in secret and parted on poor terms.

She must have said something because Lúcio murmured, "Do we say anything to Eastwood?"

Angela--no, Dr. Ziegler, no longer the woman Angela, not when it came to this--shook her head. "No," she said through her ragged breaths and sobs.

_ I will respect the privacy of my patients _ .

Never before had she wanted to break her oaths. Never before had she been so tempted.

"No," she said again and swallowed hard, steeling herself. Her patient would need her soon, and she would need to be there for him for his recovery.

She would need to break the news to the team.

She would need to hand out pamphlets, to give lectures, to hold a meeting to make sure that everyone understood.

But first there was something else that she needed to do, something much more important. Something that had to do with a jar full of biowaste that wasn't  _ waste _ , would never be to her again, after having gotten to know the ex- _ yakuza  _ prince turned killer turned hero.

* * *

Dr. Ziegler's desk rattled when two metal hands slammed down on it. Genji leaned over, gritting his teeth at her with his mask off so that she could see how unhappy he was.

"How could you have done that?" he demanded. "How could you have taken my brother from me?"

Wouldn't he have known that that very thing was what she had been thinking about the entire time? How could she have the gall to take someone's life away like this? How could she have looked herself in the mirror after she helped cut away Hanzo's heart?

How could she have done anything but weep when she held his heart in her hands, felt the pale roots in her fingers and the deadly blossoms that had so nearly choked Hanzo to death.

But how could he dare ask her that question when she held Hanzo's heart in her hands and saw the bloody petals and knew who they were for? How could she not understand the weight of her actions when she knew who exactly those flowers had been for?

"Get out," she said instead of all of this.

"Angela," Genji hissed.

She leaned over her desk, done with this pretentious little shit for trying to make her feel guiltier than she already did.

Damn him.

"Get. Out."

Her tone and the look on her face must have given something away because his face crumpled. "Angela," he pleaded.

She took a deep breath and reminded herself that there was a fifth of alcohol in her drawer. "Erotic rum" that someone (probably Lena or McCree) had gotten for her from the Caribbean. God, she could use a drink right now.

"Leave, Genji," Angela said tiredly. "If you are really upset with what I have done, perhaps then you should consider your brother's choice and not my own."

When he left she locked the doors to Medical and opened that rum. That night she lay across her desk, nearly asleep and feeling as if she had replaced her blood with cheap rum, while watching the marigold flowers on her desk.

She wondered if Hanzo would ever forgive her but laughed as she drifted off. Of course he wouldn't.

He _couldn't_.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a picture I remember of [nurses crying in the hallway](https://imgur.com/Lc4BbvZ)\--the caption claimed that they were crying after a patient miscarried--and [a picture of a doctor crying against a wall after losing a patient](http://www.idealmedicalcare.org/heart-wrenching-photo-of-doctor-crying-goes-viral-heres-why/). 
> 
> Also inspired by the song [Mercy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thvm6dADOms) by Brett Young. 
> 
> Feel free to yell at me on my tumblr [Classywastelandbread](https://classywastelandbread.tumblr.com/).
> 
> ~DC


End file.
